RpNation: Community Guidelines

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RpNation prides itself on being an open and inclusive community that promotes individualism, diversity, and a strong community spirit. The mission of The Nation is to ensure site users have a friendly, positive environment to create, and participate in, roleplay games, as well as create and share their own artistic projects with other members of the community.

To safeguard this mission, The Staff of RpNation reserve the right to ban any account at any time, and without notice, for any conduct or behavior that is deemed to be inappropriate or harmful to others. This suspension may be appealed, but we are not required to offer reasons for our decisions beyond these guidelines.

Along with the site Terms of Service, RpNation provides users with the following community guidelines to promote and sustain a positive environment on the site. Violating our Community Guidelines may result in the accruing of infraction points, suspension of user accounts, or merging of alt accounts. Please note that these guidelines are a living document and are subject to change as the site grows and changes.

Respect
Users are expected to respect all other users. Users may not attack, demean, insult, or harass other users of RpNation, including RpNation Staff.

Harassment, content or activity that targets other users aggressively with the intent to upset or attack, is not permitted. This includes continued interactions after being requested to cease. Requests to terminate communications, behaviors, or interactions must be respected. Any user may use the report function in cases of harassment even if not directed to them personally. Please also see our Ignore function PSA for further assistance.

Certain topics may be uncomfortable to some and should a polite request to end or switch topics happen, this request should be respected. This is allowable should the subject of the thread begin to go off-topic, become disrespectful, or volatile. It is not to be used to force others to shut down a conversation, but to keep to the topic in a respectful manner. Topics can include but are not limited to: sexuality, gender identity, religion, politics, philosophy, ideology, theology, or trigger topics (e.g. murder, sex, drug addiction). If requested to end or switch topics, users have the option to continue elsewhere; such as private messages.

Content or conduct that discriminates or encourages harassment, abuse, or violence is considered hateful conduct and is not permitted.

Vigilantism
Users are not Staff and should report rule-breaking content or conduct to let the staff handle these cases. Users may calmly and respectfully explain the site policies to other users, but should not act as a vigilante.

Erotic Content and Extreme Gore
RpNation is NOT a PG-13 rated site, but does cater to users who are under the age of 18. As such, users are prohibited from posting, encouraging, or requesting any explicit erotic content; both written words and media. Sexual roleplaying (smut, erotic roleplay) is not permitted and strictly prohibited from all RpNation web space, including private messages and the private workshop.

Users are also forbidden from using RpNation to solicit, imply, instruct, or lure others offsite to conduct erotic roleplay or share erotic content.

Mentions of kinks, fetishes, or sexual terms are subject to be removed and at risk of also receiving warnings.

Extreme written descriptions or media (photographic media, animated media, videos) of gore or violence are not allowed. Illustrated gore or violence can be posted, but must be placed within a spoiler BBCode tag.

Users are discouraged from making 'wall virginity' posts (i.e. posting on a user's profile with "I've stolen your wall virginity!" or other sexual references).

Illegal or Immoral Content
Users are forbidden from discussing or providing advice on topics that violate local, national, and international laws. This includes encouraging or soliciting others to violate laws or conduct criminal or immoral behavior. Topics can include, but are not limited to: piracy, copyright violations, DDoSing, doxxing, drug abuse, etc.

Literary freedoms allow characters within a roleplay to partake in illegal or immoral behaviors when it does not conflict with other site policies. Users may not discuss or give advice about illegal or immoral topics out of character. Users who do write characters involved in these topics are expected to address them in a mature, respectful, and delicate manner.

Copyright, Sharing, and Plagiarism
Users are prohibited from sharing content that is copyright-protected and explicitly restricted from public sharing. This includes all media, as well as original written works. In the case of original written content created by other users on RpNation, The Staff advises that permission is sought to use this content and credit to the original author included. Plagiarism is strictly prohibited. RpNation will respect legitimate claims for DMCA.

All BBCode hosted on RpNation falls under Creative Commons; Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0). Users may use the codes of others as long as any required attribution to the original creator/content is applied. Users should not publicly post any codes they do not want or intend for other users to use.

No Advertisements
Advertisements are posts or content with the intention of distracting from the community or personal gain. Links that sell a product or service, serve to gain user-base (such as for for another website), or generally serve to (or may) take traffic away from RpNation are prohibited.

Commissions are permitted under the Creativity forum with the “Commissions” prefix and tag. Prices, costs, and payment information may not be posted publicly and should only be handled via private message. RpNation and the Staff are not responsible or liable for any transactions for commissions.

Users may recruit to conduct roleplays off-site using various messaging programs - such as Discord, Skype or e-mail - as long as it is not done to violate other RpNation policies. RpNation and Staff are not responsible or liable for any content or conduct committed offsite or not in the RpNation Discord server. It is highly recommended to not share contact information publicly.

Users should report any content that appears to be advertising or promoting a product, service, server, or website. Additionally, it is encouraged that users host their roleplay content locally on RpNation; character sheets, plots, player/partner searches, etc. Links to other roleplaying websites or offsite roleplaying information may be removed at the Staff's discretion.

No Spam/Flooding
Users are not permitted to spam/flood on RpNation. Posting content in an incorrect area purposefully, sending messages indiscriminately to many users, and posting repetitive unwanted content falls under spam. Creating multiple posts or threads within a single section of the site in a short period of time is “flooding.” Content deemed as spam or flooding will either be removed, merged, or moved by Staff.

Incorrect Section
Users posting content in the incorrect section or area of the site may have their content altered, moved, or removed by Staff as needed to adhere to the Community Guidelines. This includes posting offsite contact information (such as Discord tags) or asking for off-site roleplays regular recruitment forums. Off-site recruitment belongs only in the Off-site Ads forums.

Bump Etiquette
Instead of making a completely new thread players can opt to 'bump' their player/partner search thread to have it appear on the first page of a forum. However, this must be done while taking into consideration that you shouldn't bump spam your thread. Bump spamming is when a user repeatedly bumps their thread or multiple threads with such frequency it becomes spam/flooding.

[nobr]Here are some basic bump guidelines,

Do not bump multiple threads (5+) at the same time. Space it out or consider combining your threads if you can.

The best practice is to only bump your thread once per 24 hrs. This is to give everyone a fair chance to have their threads checked out by players.

If you truly wish to bump your thread before 24 hrs, you should at least wait until it has fallen from the first page of a forum. The forums move at a slower pace than you would think so please be sure to wait until this happens.

[/nobr]Recruitment Rules
Users are expected to adhere to the Recruitment Rules. Please click on the link to read what these rules are.

Distracting Content
Signatures, avatars, and profile covers should not be overly distracting or violate other RpNation policies. Signatures should be a reasonable length and format, and preferably not include gifs as these may become very distracting. Avatars are not animated as the site software does not support this feature.

Font/Colors should be used with discretion. RpNation has multiple themes and what may be visible under one theme might not be visible under another. In order to ensure content is readable, RpNation requests users do not apply text colors or fonts in certain sections; Community Hub and Discussion. Should a user’s content be unreadable, the Staff may edit it to resolve this issue.

Usernames may only use the following characters to make it easier to tag and type them:
All alphanumerics (A-Z, a-z, 0-9), in both upper and lower case
Periods ( . ), colons ( : ), semi-colons ( ; ), underscores ( _ ), hyphens ( - ), and spaces

Usernames that contain characters or symbols not permitted since the implemented change are required to change them. Users should report usernames that do not conform to this requirement so Staff may contact them. They are not in trouble. Changing a username due to this reason will not use up the allowed username allowance.

English Only
Content posted on RpNation is expected to be written in English. This includes the RpNation Discord server, private workshop, profile posts, and private messages. This assists the Staff so that they may moderate content effectively and fairly.

Minor elements of posts, such as phrases, signatures, and in-character dialogue, are not required to be written in English. Users may be asked to provide an honest translation upon Staff request.

Spoilers
Users should avoid spoiling content by using the spoiler or in-line spoiler BBCode tag or using threads with the proper 'Spoiler' prefix. Spoilers are discussions about plot or character developments of a media product (i.e. books, TV shows, movies, etc).

Positive Environment
RpNation seeks to maintain an environment where users can expect to find a general atmosphere of positivity and good-natured community spirit. To this end, users are prohibited from using the site’s resources to attack or demean others, or to disturb or cause undue concern.

Self-Destructive Behavior
Making threats or comments implying a desire to commit suicide or self-harm are prohibited on RpNation. If you are feeling a desire to commit suicide or self-harm, please contact The Staff via the confidential Staff Contact forum where we can provide information, phone numbers, and links to suicide and self-harm resources.

Discussion of Account Suspensions or Warnings
Discussing actions taken against any user accounts by The Staff publicly is prohibited. This includes discussing specifics of Community Guidelines and the implementation of such. If you have a concern, question, or appeal about a specific warning or suspension on your own account, please use the confidential Staff Contact forum.

Offensive Terms
The Staff of RpNation have determined a number of universally offensive terms are prohibited from use anywhere on the site and its services and have selectively filtered these terms. Such terms will be automatically altered and it will be up to the user posting the content to edit their content accordingly. Any attempt to bypass the word filter, such as by using spaces or other characters, is prohibited.

Guideline Enforcement
Violations of the guidelines will result in infraction points. Any users who incur infraction points - based on the severity and amount - faces a timed ban from RpNation. Minor or first time infractions will insult in one infraction point; a 24 hour ban. Two infraction points will result in a 7 day ban. Three infraction points will result in a 30 day ban. Previous infractions and any points accrued will be taken into account when a suspension is considered. While infraction points will eventually expire - at a rate every of 60 days - a record will remain of all accrued points on a user's account. Use of alternate accounts (“Alts”) or other users’ accounts to evade an account suspension is prohibited and can result in the suspension or merging of those accounts. All appeals will be reviewed by the Staff as a whole and a decision, once reached, will be final and no longer open to discussion.

COPPA Enforcement
The Children's Online Protection Privacy Act (abbreviated to COPPA) is a federal law of the United States of America. The details of the law can be found COPPA - Children's Online Privacy Protection. The short of it is that since the site’s owner and the server containing the site are both American, the site must abide by this law. Failure to comply with this law can get RpNation shut down and the site owner in legal trouble. This law is what prevents users under the age of 13 from being members of the site. For this reason, users that are found to be under the age of 13 will have their accounts disabled without warning by RpNation Staff.